“Here you go, dear lady, it’s Marc-André.” Kostas’s surprise might have been more convincing if he, himself, hadn’t dialled Marc-André’s number and spoken to him for at least five minutes.
Marc-André sounded pleasant and cheerful and sexy enough to make my knees tremble. I sat again and crossed my legs. So what if the left one still ached?
“Hello, Fiona, Kostas says you would like me to read a few words at Benedict’s scattering ceremony.”
“Yes.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Thank you.”
Amazing. I probably know umpteen thousand words in the English language and hundreds more in French plus a few in Latin, and where were they all now that I really needed them?
“Do you have any particular poems in mind?” he asked.
“Umm, no.” I’d never heard of Marc-André until the Benedict disaster and, for some reason, reading poetry had not been on top of my To Do list since.
“Would you like to get together and go over some of my work? You could pick what you think is suitable.”
Words words words think of some words.
“Fiona? Are you there?”
“Uh-huh. Absolutely. Good idea. Excellent. Fine. Right.”
“And, Kostas mentioned the urn is bothering you. Is it?”
“Only when I see it or think about it.” Oh good, a whole string of words. I hoped I didn’t open my mouth again and sing out A sex life a sex life I think I found a sex life.
“Of course,” he said. “I don’t think it would bother me. I might even enjoy it. I could keep it here for you.”
“Uh-huh.” Wait a minute. “What do you mean for me?
The urn isn’t mine. I hadn’t even seen Benedict for...”
“Fiona? I have a job to finish here, and I can’t get away this afternoon, but Josey says you are going to the Findlay Falls for a hike today. Would you like to drop the urn at my place afterwards?”
Would I like to get that damn thing out of my house and get to see Marc-André again? Would I like it?
“Uh-huh,” I said.
Hold everything. What was that about the Findlay Falls?
I wasn’t sure what I didn’t like about Marc-André looking after the ashes, but something about it seemed weird. What were the moral imperatives about keeping the remains of your former-almost-lover anyway? And more important, what would Bridget think about bouncing Benedict around like the hot potato he had become?
“I think Mr. Paradis was flattered when you asked him to read his poems at the scattering,” Josey said.
I tried to hold back the latest puce flush. Luckily, we were passing Nettoyeur Le Quikie at that moment, and I remembered they’d called to say my clothes were ready, earlier than expected. I swerved into their parking section and prepared myself to be the focus of gossip. I figured it would be worth it to get my periwinkle suede skirt and matching silk blouse back.
“How’s your leg, Miz Silk?” Josey asked when I got back in the car.
I was grateful she’d changed the subject from Marc-André Paradis. “It’s fine now,” I said without thinking.
“Good, so we can drop those ashes off,” Josey said, staring at my neck, which was already flushed in anticipation of whatever she was going to say, “on our way back from the Findlay Falls. Miz Lamontagne says it’s real beautiful there and worth the climb. And with all the people around, we’ll be safer there than here.”
“No Findlay Falls today.” I shot her a Sarrazin glare, which got me exactly nowhere.
“I worked on the maps while you were asleep, and I figured out the route where you can experience the most educational type of things. Outside of France, that is. But I guess I won’t get to see that anytime soon.”
Right. Full marks to Josey.
“It’s a good thing Miz Lamontagne packed us this excellent lunch,” Josey said from her perch on the rock. “We probably won’t get down from here before five-thirty. Didn’t it turn out nice today? The trees look really beautiful through the mist.”
We were finally at the Falls, or, more accurately, half-way up the steep hiking trail that ran alongside them. One of us was in a really good mood. The other one was me. I couldn’t bring myself to agree with Josey’s description of a beautiful day.
“Mist? Mist? Could you possibly be referring to this chilly drizzle?”
“Dr. Prentiss was right. It sure would be great to have a pair of binoculars up here, wouldn’t it?”
“Would it? I think it would be great if Dr. Prentiss were here, herself, climbing in this sleet.” It was easy for Hélène and Liz to approve of this climb. They hadn’t legged it up steep slopes for the past three hours. When we’d estimated the climb, it had appeared short and straightforward. Now we squinted down at stamp-sized fields. I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d been diverted from the simple task of delivering Benedict’s urn to Marc-André Paradis to galloping up what felt like a mountain. But somehow, on the way, I’d found myself pulling into the parking lot by the foot of the Findlay Falls trail.
It seemed like another lifetime when we’d passed the first of the two lookout points where all the tourists with any brains stopped. The ache in my leg muscles reminded me that the extent of my exercise was the regular half hour a day tossing a Frisbee for Tolstoy. And even that was getting short shrift with all the chaos in our lives. On the bright side, I didn’t have to lug the urn.
“She’s right about binoculars,” Josey said.
I flashed her a glance filled with recrimination. She missed it because she was fishing in her knapsack. “Those chicken sandwiches were good. Let’s see what else we got.”
She produced two nice looking pears and a dozen chocolate chunk shortbread cookies and proceeded to unwrap them.
“I really like this place, don’t you? Do you think anyone ever lived in those caves?” She slipped Tolstoy a shortbread cookie.
“No.” I reached for one before they all vanished.
“You sure?” I didn’t care for this cave talk. “Yes. Bears maybe.”
“Bears? Wow. We should check.”
“No. We shouldn’t.”
“But if they’re just ordinary black bears, they usually won’t hurt you if you don’t get between them and their cubs. Or their food. Or make any loud aggressive noises. Or...”
“I’m going back. Now.”
Josey paid no attention. “I like that waterfall,” she said.
I would have liked the waterfall a lot myself if it had been closer to civilization, and if it didn’t derive from a million little drizzle-fed springs trickling across the terrain we had climbed.
Josey stood and brushed off the crumbs. “You ready to go the rest of the way? Who knows what we’ll find.”
I gazed up the slope with mistrust. I wasn’t expecting to find anything more appealing than bear poop. “No. I’m not ready to go the rest of the way. Remember the tourists we saw around the bottom of the falls? Remember the dozens of cars we saw in the parking lot? Do you notice not one of those people came up this route? They only hike to the second level. There’s a good reason for that. Two if you include the bears.”
She shrugged.
“Plus, we’re vulnerable here. What if one of us, most likely me, sprains an ankle? How would we get help? We’re a million miles from anywhere.” Worse than that, we were separated from the crowds, and this was not the ideal situation, given earlier events. I noticed a whining tone creeping into my commentary.
“But it’s interesting. And this brochure says you can see for miles when you get to the top.”
I grumbled. “There are things worth seeing from the top of the Himalayas. But I’m not going to climb them to check it out.”
“We don’t want to be sheep and only do what other people do.”
“I have no problem with being a sheep. You will remember we passed the sheep some time ago. They’re a lot closer to civilization than we are, let me point out. And I’m not going any further. I don’t want to argue about it any more.”
“See, you’re wrong, Miz Silk, here comes someone else now.”
Sure enough, a baseball cap peeked out above the vegetation. A lone climber wound his way up the narrow, rocky trail.
I didn’t care. I had made up my mind, no more stumbling over bear droppings and slimy rocks.
The lone hiker crunched closer. Tolstoy cocked his head with interest. I opened my mouth to silence whatever preposterous proposal Josey was bleating.
“Miz Silk,” she squeaked. “Jeez. Let’s get out of here.”
“What?”
She stuffed our thermoses and her guidebooks back into the carryall.
“We gotta go,” she said.
“I love the idea, but why the hurry?”
“Because,” she whispered, “I’ve seen that hat before. It’s what the guy who smucked you with the car wore.”
I stayed calm. Josey scrambled over the boulders ahead. Tolstoy bounded after her.
“Hold on,” I said to their vanishing backsides, “there must be hundreds of red baseball caps like that. I’m sure that guy couldn’t have followed us up here.”
I changed my mind when the first bullet whizzed by my head.